Knowing that I was going to be using Twitter eventually in my MET course work, I established a Twitter account at the beginning of the summer and have been dabbling with it ever since. I actually found it quite valuable on a personal level during the BCTF labour dispute, as it was quite easy to stay informed about the latest developments and the wealth of links provided within tweets to relevant news stories, media clips and personal blogs was very convenient.

Professionally, I have not yet found a way to really bring Twitter into the classroom. In my social justice club, I do relay some of the tweets of people that I am following who are difference makers, but beyond that, I do not make much use of it in my teaching role. I see the potential that it can have as a learning tool, but I feel limited in my use of it due to the age group of students that I work with. Because of this, I feel like I cannot really take advantage of all that it could offer. Working with 9 and 10 year olds, most of my students do not have personal devices that they can access Twitter on. Many of my students are not allowed to sign up for or be involved in social media outlets. Students that do have their own devices are not allowed to use them within the confines of the school day due to our school policy on device usage.

I am not giving up hope, however. If I can find a way to make it work in my classroom as a tool, I would like to explore the potential that Twitter has for things such as the following:
– using it to teach summarizing (concise and precise writing) since each message can only be 140 characters in length, this can be a worthwhile learning endeavour
– using it to share reminders, tips, quick facts etc. instead of relying on students to record this type of information in their planners and then share them with their family
– using it as a way to both encourage and increase the amount of dialogue that I am engaging in with my students, as well as student to student communication too
– using Twitter as an alternative to some of the other web tools that I regularly use such as padlet.com and todaysmeet.com

One of my other reservations is that my students will need to have an account to participate in Twitter, whereas sites such as padlet.com and todaysmeet.com have very minimal setup and students can access the discourse areas with a simple pre-established URL. Unlike a blog, I do not have the option (at least not to my knowledge) of previewing and approving tweets prior to them being posted. I would worry that a class generated or class intended hashtag would be discovered and used inappropriately by random Twitter users. After doing some research, I discovered that you can add a Twitter feed to a weebly website (http://hc.weebly.com/hc/en-us/articles/200513837-Add-Your-Twitter-Feed-Badge-to-a-Site). I am considering establishing a new Twitter account strictly for my role as a teacher and placing the feed on my class website in order to see what the response from my students and their parents is. I can see some of my more tech savvy students that are given a lot more freedom online at home taking advantage of this extra way to engage in conversations with myself and their classmates. I am as yet undecided. I am on the fence, but we’ll see what else I learn about the pros and cons of Twitter by the end of the module.